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Reports of another massacre in Syria

ELEANOR HALL: To Syria now where there are reports of another massacre - this one in a suburb on the capital, Damascus.

Opponents of Bashar al-Assad say government forces killed at least 85 people, including women and children.

In another development overnight the United States has doubled its non-lethal aid to opposition forces to $250 million.

An international relations expert at the University of New South Wales, Dr Anthony Billingsley, told Barney Porter that the US announcement could indicate concern about the influence of Islamist fighters in the rebellion.

ANTHONY BILLINGSLEY: The Americans are, like everybody, I suppose, trying to find a line between aiding the rebels and aiding those rebels that they don't like. So the various Salafist groups and the groups linked to Al-Nusra Front, for example, which as got Al Qaeda links. They're trying very hard, I think probably unsuccessfully to keep the aid from those groups.

So I think probably what's happening now is the Americans have decided 'right-o, we've tried this issue through Turkey, letting the Turks and others distribute the aid, now we're going to do it ourselves. And we will be very picky and choosy as to who we support and who we don't support.'

BARNEY PORTER: Another development overnight, the head of the Syrian opposition has tended his resignation yet again for a lack of international support for the opposition forces. More grandstanding?

ANTHONY BILLINGSLEY: Well, I think it's not so much grandstanding as desperation. Moaz al-Khatib is a, as you suggested, has resigned before complaining of lack of material support for the opposition from the Friends of Syria. He was actually asking for military action in certain contexts and nobody seems to be willing to go quite that far. But I think he's really now struggling to hold the line against the Islamist forces who are proving to be more successful in the civil war than the more secular groups and is trying to, he's trying to get the West and others to support more secular groups.

He is certainly in the, he's a former imam, he's not an irreligious man but he is in the secular camp very clearly and opposed to the extremists.

BARNEY PORTER: Syria has not been a lead item for international news of recent times. We're getting reports of another possible massacre, this time in suburbs of Damascus. How do you see this story panning out? It's been a couple of years since the uprising began; we just get updates every now and then, more fighting in Syria. How do you see this coming to some sort of conclusion?

ANTHONY BILLINGSLEY: Well, I think the massacre itself, appalling though it is, is just another horrible event in that civil war. It is very, very difficult to see how we are going to get out of this. The Lebanese civil war ran for you know, a decade, you know, and there's no reason why this one shouldn't go that way as well.

From the Archives

Sri Lanka is now taking stock of the country's 26-year-long civil war, in which the UN estimates as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed. This report by the ABC's Alexander McLeod in 1983 looks at the origins of the conflict as it was just beginning.